Energy: When even Chuck Schumer is upset with the White House, you know something's amiss. In this case, it's news that efforts to boost wind power with taxpayer stimulus dollars are filling foreign coffers and creating foreign jobs.

According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Investment Act has been spent on wind power. The goal was to further energy independence while creating American jobs. It has done neither.

Of the money spent, according to the report, nearly 80% has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.

"In all due respect, I remind (Energy Secretary Steven Chu) there is a four-letter word associated with the stimulus  J-O-B-S," Sen. Schumer, D-N.Y., told ABC News, which interviewed him for a report done in coordination with the workshop's investigation. "Very few jobs here, lots of jobs in China."

The only good thing one can say is that at least China is a real place, as opposed to the phantom ZIP codes and congressional districts in which the administration has claimed to have created jobs.

But how does buying wind turbines made in China create energy independence or create jobs?

Last October, on the day the workshop first reported on this story, a consortium of U.S. and Chinese companies announced a deal to build a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas, using imported Chinese turbines.

Americans have chosen to buy goods made by slaves in China because American accountants look at the current quarters profit performance as the measuring stick for economic success. The inventory tax killed the concept of economic order quantity in manufacturing. Harvard business school did this to us, yet we still reward Harvard MBA’s way out of proportion to what they really have done to the economy.

2
posted on 02/11/2010 5:47:37 PM PST
by Waverunner
( "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Voltaire)

After WW2 the US was the sole manufacturer of goods in the world. Nobody can beat our productivity and more important most of the world outside of Europe did not have the tech base to produce manufactured goods like the American workers. As long we kept this know how home and never share it with the rest of the world (especially our cutting edge technologies), our standard of living and dominance in this world is assured. Instead our corporations wanted to make even more money so they slowly exported the knowledge overseas and created a foreign lower paid workforce (which never existed until corporate America trained them) to achieve those lofty profits at the expense of American dominance. Today we are paying the price for such globalist foolishness and the recession/depression has made the lesson even more acute. One day corporate America, their financiers on Wall Street and their enablers in the government will be held accountable to the American people. The justice meted out will not be pretty.

One has to face the fact that the average American worker is under-educated, over-paid, and just not as productive as their counterparts around the world.

The only country in the world that has ever beat us in terms of productivity is Japan, and we still swap places with them at the top occasionally. The undereducated part? Yes, we produce far too many commie liberal arts grads, but we still produce top-notch engineers at a pretty good clip.

Problem is way too much hidden government overhead, and a monetary/regulatory system that has damn near outlawed the private production of wealth.

If the U.S can build wind turbines on the scale and price point as those Chinese companies, then American companies would get those jobs.

I think you are leaving out part of the story. The Obama "stimulus" bill had rules that required US workers to be paid union wages (thanks, Snowe, Collins, Specter). Also, Chinese manufacturers don't have the same government imposed burdens that our manufacturers do.

Things may get worse unless we vote out enough congresscrooks in November.

9
posted on 02/11/2010 8:33:06 PM PST
by ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas
(Pat Caddell: Democrats are drinking kool-aid in a political Jonestown)

One has to face the fact that the average American worker is under-educated, over-paid, and just not as productive as their counterparts around the world.

Do people like you ever get tired of chanting this mantra?

What is someone in America supposed to do when his competition is happy to live on $30 a month? They will never win that battle (regardless of their education or training) unless our standard of living devolves to that of a third world nation. Why in the hell would anyone in our country want to do that? In order to boost the bonuses on Wall St.? This type of lowest common denominator thinking is why the future of our kids is not looking so bright.

Historically speaking, populations that get screwed by the ruling class only take it for so long. If the ruling class doesn’t clue in and keeps operating as business as usual, things are going to get ugly. There is nothing sacred about our economic system, we can modify it and make it so it benefits the citizens of this country instead of communist Chinese.

The issue I am trying to point out to one globalist freeper, is that we are in this position because the corporate class in our country is willing to outsource everything including our technology for a buck. How can we remain a powerful country and maintain a high standard of living for most Main Street Americans if we give away all our technical advantages so a few in the US can get even more and more money, money they cannot spend in a thousand life times. If China and India becomes the leading technological power in the world, they will protect their advantage. Read about the era when China and India produced silk and how they kept it a secret for over 400 prosperous years.

My wife is a foreman in a company that makes electronic connectors. A Chinese company ordered some parts from her company, but did not reorder. Her theory is that the Chinese reverse engineered the parts so they could manufacture them.

13
posted on 02/11/2010 9:04:47 PM PST
by ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas
(Pat Caddell: Democrats are drinking kool-aid in a political Jonestown)

I suppose the rationale is that people in the US will erect, operate, and maintain the turbines, and our wind will produce the energy we use. I just hope we are expanding support to our own producers so they can expand and we don’t need to go overseas. Disclaimer: I own some GE stock.

“Her theory is that the Chinese reverse engineered the parts so they could manufacture them.”

_____________

It’s amazing how many times I hear this story. I’ve heard it about lasers, electronics, Special microchips, Glass manufacturing. On and on, and when I lived on Taiwan in the 1960’s it was prevalent there too. Intellectual property and the rights that we afford it, mean absolutely nothing.

So, really, what do you do about such things? Well, frankly it comes down to individual decisions and not governmental. You as a individual decide what you want to buy, acquire etc. Do you REALLY need that super-sized HDTV. Or would you be better off sticking with your old one or better yet. Get rid of it too and the cable/satellite/broadcast TV shows also that go hand in hand with owning and using a TV.

I personally have taken a hard look at my lifestyle and both my wife and I have down-sized amazingly. Mind you, we still live comfortably but we do it with less than we used to do. We also try to buy from American companies and American produced items first.

The Government isn’t going to help you out here. You have to do it, It’s a constant job and not a once off like the Government likes to do.

16
posted on 02/12/2010 5:15:53 AM PST
by The Working Man
(Any work is better than "welfare")

“What is someone in America supposed to do when his competition is happy to live on $30 a month? They will never win that battle (regardless of their education or training) unless our standard of living devolves to that of a third world nation. Why in the hell would anyone in our country want to do that? In order to boost the bonuses on Wall St.? This type of lowest common denominator thinking is why the future of our kids is not looking so bright.”

Here is the single biggest fallacy that I find with the standard American thinking concerning it’s loss of economic power. The idea that other countries like China are expanding mainly based on labor costs.

Exports like Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, High Speed bullet trains, Smart Grids...etc cannot be compared to low tech exports like toys and textiles. These industries are highly automated and employ advanced technologies which requires large numbers of skilled engineers and technicians. And specialists with extensive training have to be relatively well paid, even in countries like China.

The thought that Americans can’t compete with Chinese due to their cost in these high-end technologies is contradicted by the fact that European and Japanese industries are competitive with their Chinese counterparts.

Why is it that EU wind turbine and high-speed rail companies have just as large a market share as their Chinese counterparts, while paying their employees more than what Americans make? Because the superior education and training of the European engineers allows them to build better designs with a longer shelf life. Superior automation technologies allows the Europeans and Japanese to compensate for their higher labor costs.

America(with it’s poorly educated, overpaid workforce) is the exception. It has poor quality engineers, grossly inefficient mechanics and technicians all of whom wants the pay and benefits beyond what their capabilities are actually worth. That’s why the Euros and Japanese dominate high-end green tech, the Chinese dominates low end, and America gets the crumbs.

We have the face the fact that UNSKILLED labor with a high-school diploma can only expect to earn 5 to 10 thousand dollars(in terms of purchasing power) a year. That is simply what this labor is worth in a global market in which countries like China and India can produce unskilled factory labor with a high school education at that price point.

Does the price of labor go up with superior education(and by education, I mean hard sciences/engineering not liberal arts) and training? Yes, because most people are still relatively uneducated, and the majority of people do not have the innate abilities in that area.

Does the price of unskilled and skilled labor go up with better transportation/energy/telecom infrastructure and automation? Yes, because one can leverage the labor and resources more efficiently and on a great scale due to those improvements.

Does the price of domestic unskilled and skilled labor go up if the technology of their products are properly safe guarded? Yes, there are lots of ways of doing that, but all of it requires discipline and sacrifice at the corporate and national leadership level.

We can be competitive again, but it requires a great deal of work and sacrifice. However, I do know that we will NEVER be competitive by blaming other countries and peoples for their hard work and sacrifice.

5. Attract/retain top talent from Eurasia, while reducing illegal immigration of unskilled populations.

This strategy is better than money in the bank. Smart, disciplined people, if properly assimilated into American society, can pay their cost 100 fold in terms of extra tax revenue while weakening the potential of our economic competitors. Our problem right now is that we have too many unskilled people of mediocre talent, and more every year via illegal immigration.

If we drastically upped the quality of technical education(for those minds capable of handling it), while attracting the best from other nations, then we can be back on our feet in relatively quickly.

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